Kwesi Pratt Jnr has lambasted the Ministry of Education for licensing teachers even after certifying them to be qualified teachers.
He said, if the purpose of the Licensure Examination is to prepare teachers to meet the demands of the National Teachers’ Standards, then the purpose of certification is defeated and thereby making mockery of the years teachers spent in school.
“This licensing is not necessary, it is absolutely useless, if you have a teacher education system which produces qualified teachers, you don’t need to license them, their certificate of training college ought to be enough. Now what we are saying is that the certificate of training college is useless, that is what all this is confirming”,
The Editor of the Insight Newspaper said instead of turning a blind eye to the plight of teachers in the country, the ministry should channel the energy into improving conditions of service for them.
Mr Pratt said the ministry of education is creating an impression of deliberately failing teachers in licensure examination.
“When teachers licensing was introduced, we heard that this may be a ploy that because they cannot employ all teacher trainees, they need to have a system which sieves down and make only a few of them employable, this is beginning to look like that. Afterall, if you go and take the exam and you fail, they will claim that it is nobody’s fault and that if you had passed you would have been employed”.
Kwesi Pratt said it is a distraction from focusing on the pressing issues of the country.
“Are we the people who developed the curriculum for teacher trainee? do we have the powers to ensure that that curriculum is followed? are we even involved in the process of ensuring that at the end of three years instruction the people really qualify to be teachers? We are not. It is the responsibility of Government, they like this diversion, wasting of our time, what am I going to do with this information? He quizzed.
A total of 6,451 (83.5%) teachers failed the 2023 Ghana Teacher Licensure Examination conducted in May 2023 out of 7728.
Kwesi Pratt made the remarks on good morning Ghana on Metro TV
